The bronze casting (fig. 1) was recently purchased by the Royal Irish Academy. It was one of the antiquities preserved at Killua Castle, co. Westmeath, but its previous history is unknown. The length of the casting is 4·4 in.: the raised box-shaped portion is 2·4 in. in breadth, while the flat portion measures at its widest part 1·5 in. Possibly it was the limb of a cruciform mounting for a book-cover. Its ornamentation is admirable.

The following document is of some interest as illustrating the history of the ‘Children of the Chapel Royal’, which is not yet worked out for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

John Plummer is mentioned as one of the clerks of the King's Chapel in 1441, receiving a grant of £10 on the 12th April in that year. The grant of forty marks a year for the maintenance of the eight singing-boys, here mentioned, is dated 4th November 1444, and from that date onwards it may be presumed that they ceased to draw their clothing from the great wardrobe. On 24th February 1445 Plummer was formally appointed their teacher and governor. On 30th May 1446 the grant of forty marks, charged on the ulnager of Bristol, was renewed. This grant was presumably rendered invalid by the Act of Resumption of 1449, but it does not appear certain that the following warrant for its revival took effect, since no Letters Patent in pursuance are to be found in the Calendar of Patent Rolls. A similar grant of forty marks a year was granted to Plummer's successor, Henry Abyndon, on 16th March 1456, to date from his appointment at Michaelmas 1455. This grant was renewed by Edward IV on 10th July 1465.

In the year 1919 it became necessary to excavate to a depth of 2 ft. over a given area on Worthy Down, near Winchester. At the north-east corner of the excavation a number of iron currency-bars were uncovered. None of the excavators knew what they were at the time and they were thrown aside, but one of the party, Mr. C. H. Blenkinsop, eighteen months after, on visiting the British Museum, noticed similar objects labelled ‘Iron Currency-bars’. He returned to the site, collected several bars, and brought them to me. A few days afterwards I examined the ground in his company. The excavation was oblong, with its long axis east and west, and the section exposed showed 6 in. of soil and 1 ft. 6 in. of chalk. At the north-east angle was seen what appeared to be the section of one of the sides of a shallow trench filled with earth, chalk-rubble, and burnt flints. On digging to remove the turf on the surface contiguous to this section, the spade was checked by several iron currency-bars, which lay hidden by the grass that had grown over them since they were cast out. At 1 ft. 6 in. below the surface I found the end of a bar 8⅗ in. long, which fitted on to one of the bars already in my possession. The exact position and level of the original discovery were thus known. At a depth of 2 ft. the chalk was reached. The digging was then directed eastwards, and it was found that the soil deepened. A seam of flint ‘pot-boilers’ and charcoal was met with at 2 ft. 6 in. A fragment of a human cranium, bones and teeth of (?) horse, ox, pig, and sheep, with pieces of pottery were also found. These discoveries occurred on the 13th August 1920. Further excavations were made on various dates.

For the past sixty years the environs of the village of Spiennes, south-east of Mons in Hainault, Belgium, have continually provided archaeologists with evidence in great abundance. The banks of the Trouille valley have been inhabited almost continuously since man first appeared on the earth, that is since the beginning of quaternary times. The relics of these successive occupations by man are distributed according to their date on three of the four terraces, at the respective elevations of 266, 233, 100, and 7 feet above the river level. On the 233 ft. terrace is found an industry of considerable interest, still almost entirely of eolithic character and typical of the first transition from the primitive industry to the palaeolithic. On the 100 ft. terrace a seam of flints at the base of the early alluvium contains an enormous development of the first palaeolithic industry which was named pre-Chelles by the late Professor Commont. This is the industry corresponding to the Piltdown skull in England, and to the second (133 ft.) and third (83 ft.) terraces of the Somme valley at St. Acheul. It also occurs on the high ground of North Kent (Swanscombe, Galley Hill, etc., on the 100 ft. terrace).

On 26th June 1920 workmen in the employ of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, whilst excavating at the Ministry's Farm Settlement at Amesbury, discovered some bones of a skeleton. The site lies approximately 175 yards north-east of Ratfyn Barrow (marked on the Ordnance Map), and about 6 in. below the surface of the chalk. The grave was about 7 ft. long and about 2 ft. 3 in. in depth. Mr. P. Farrar, of Bulford Camp, a local archaeologist, was at once communicated with, and discovered further remains after a careful search.

The bronze object shown in fig. 1 was, according to the man from whom I got it in 1915, at Granada, found in or close to the ruins supposed to be those of Medina Elvira, near the village of Atarfe. He stated at that time that the person from whom he had bought it claimed to have found it there, a few weeks before my visit; and in 1919 he made a similar statement. This history, in spite of the seeming lack of motive for its falsification, appears at least in certain details to be incorrect, for the author of Iglesias Mozárabes speaks (p. 390) of the piece having appeared for sale at Granada in 1910 and 1914, and suggests the possibility that it had been brought there, to be sold, from some distant point, although he adds that the form of its horseshoe-shaped little arches and the heart-shaped terminals favour the idea of an Andalusian origin. Granada, as a centre of tourist traffic, tends indeed to attract to itself antiquities (real or false) not only from other parts of Spain but even from abroad (e. g. Morocco and Italy); but that an object so rare, comparatively, as the present one should, if coming from abroad, find its way there in preference to some more important centre, seems to me unlikely although not impossible.

In a paper read before the St. Paul's Ecclesiological Society as far back as 12th November 1885, the late Sir William Hope laid down the main principles to be adopted in determining the dates of early chalices and patens of English manufacture. So far as I am aware nothing that has been written since has served to modify these principles in any marked degree. He classified the pre-Reformation chalices in eight sections. Between the first four and the last four of these there was a marked distinction, due to the spread in the fourteenth century of the custom of laying down the chalice on the paten to drain after the ablutions. The effect of this custom was the abandonment of the round-footed chalice, which would be unstable in such a position, and the making of chalices with hexagonal bases. For as practical a reason the hemispherical design of the bowl of the chalice was abandoned in favour of a conical shape which would drain the more easily in such a position.

Since their first publication in 1757 (Archaeologia, ii, 32, pl. ii), the gold crescents characteristic of the Early Bronze Age of Ireland have remained in part unexplained; and the various names suggested for them reflect the prevailing uncertainty as to their use and significance. In his recently published Catalogue of Irish Gold Ornaments, our Fellow Mr. Armstrong has brought together all the existing material, and on consideration adopts the view that these gold crescents were worn as collars. They at first went under the name of lunulae or little moons, and a favourite term in later years has been lunette, which is generally used in French for ‘telescope’, and though more manageable than lunula, is not so fitted for international use as ‘crescent’.